In These Times

Latest Comments view all 3

• • 25 Aug 07
  • 12:05 pm

  I think this program is amazing. It is a good way to socialize the big urban neighborhoods. A lot of the residents in these large urban neighborhoods are minorities that have agricultural backgrounds in their families past, so this idea could catch on...I would maybe take it a step further, not to sound too socialist, and have the produce sold in the markets around the neighborhood and the profits go to keeping the rents down, neighborhood revitalization, after-school programs and eventually to the schools (buying books, computers, renovations). Make it as transparent as possible and see how it does.

  Posted to Farming the Concrete Jungle

• • 23 Aug 07
  • 3:01 pm

  I would have to agree with your point-of-view. As an African-American male I notice the 'demonization' of the culture-music, clothes, language. And have noticed that instead of finding the source of the communites (Black & Hispanic) disengagment with the status-quo it has been much easier for lack of a better term to incarcerate and attack these communities. Gangs are the tip of the iceberg which is a direct result , in my opinion, of the eradication of the black leadership in the 60's & 70's by the federal government. Now they are trying, unsuccessfully, to clean up the mess they created. …

  Posted to The Counterproductive War on Gangs

• • 25 Aug 07
  • 11:28 am

  Very true, the gangs don't deserve our sympathy. They are violent, reprehinsible human beings that should take responsibility for their OWN actions. But each one of these gangs operates as a function of individuals who are living in the same plight of society and can relate that situation with one another...thus they form gangs. They come from a part of society, each one of the individual members, that lacks leadership, education and resources and become a product of this....in a not so obvious similarity to a tribe/clan...they are a reaction of the environment and they're survival, by whatever means that maybe, …

  Posted to The Counterproductive War on Gangs